Progress - Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future Quotes

“So it was not superior thinkers, inventors or businesses that made Europe rich, but the fact that European elites were less successful in obstructing them... This is somewhat similar to our era of globalization. More countries, in more places, now have access to the sum of humanity's knowledge, and are open to the best innovations from other places... If progress is blocked in one place, many others will continue humanity's journey. (217-218)”
― Johan Norberg, Progress - Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“A child born today is more likely to reach retirement age than his forebears were to live to their fifth birthday.”
― Johan Nordberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“Despite what we hear on the news and from many authorities, the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever to take place. Poverty,”
― Johan Nordberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“According to an ambitious attempt to measure poverty over the long run, with a $2 a day threshold for extreme poverty, adjusted for purchasing power in 1985, ninety-four per cent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty in 1820, eighty-two per cent in 1910 and seventy-two per cent in 1950.19 But in the last few decades things have really begun to change. Between 1981 and 2015 the proportion of low- and middle-income countries suffering from extreme poverty was reduced from fifty-four per cent to twelve per cent.”
― Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“So it seems that the only way for terrorists to win is if its victims overreact, dismantle civil liberties and blame whole groups for the actions of a few. Doing so stirs up the very conflicts that the terrorists seek and makes it easier to recruit terrorists and continue the battle (103).”
― Johan Norberg, Progress - Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“wonderful paper by Jim Oeppen and James Vaupel looks at the forecasts of experts, including the United Nations and the World Bank, who have repeatedly asserted that life expectancy is approaching a ceiling. The paper concludes that those ceilings have always been broken, on average five years after the estimate was published. Oeppen and Vaupel point out that female life expectancy in the record-holding country has risen for an amazing 160 years at a steady pace of almost three months per year, and there is no end in sight. The apparent levelling off in some countries is an artefact of laggards catching up and leaders falling behind. Amazingly, there is not a single country that hasn’t seen improvements in infant and child mortality since 1950.29”
― Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future